Major Cost Increase for HMO Covering School Workers

Thursday, May 30, 2013

The cost of the HMO covering most Santa Barbara school district employees is skyrocketing 31 percent, announced Brian Tanguay, coordinator of classified personnel, at Tuesday’s board meeting. He said the bump follows national trends and that the number of districts in its provider’s pool of HMO subscribers is shrinking. The elephant in the room, he said, was the “Sansum-Cottage monopoly.” Union president for the non-teacher employees, Paul Rooney, urged the district to take on a greater share of the increased costs. The Anthem Blue Cross plan covers 736 employees and over 2,000 people including dependents.

Comments

If the school district takes on this extra cost, this is called a "raise". The proper response is thank you tax payers, for giving us something you probably have to forgo yourselves.

So please explain again how we were told during the last round of parcel taxes they were not going to fund increased union benefits?

Where else is this new money coming from, and what else will not get done "for the children" by paying these increased employee health insurance premiums?

Time for the employees to feel the pinch, so their unions can do something useful for them this time.

Like howl like mad at the health care companies, instead of demanding the district roll over and take even more money "for the children" and hand it over to the employees.

As long as the insurance companies know the employee unions will get the district to pay, why is there any incentive for them to bring in lower insurance costs? Answer: none.

I wish the employee unions cared more about "the children" than they do for themselves. The line between education dollar being spent on education, and being spent instead on for employee job perks has long been crossed.